Rediscovering our cities: warts and all stories of invisible city dwellers

After a year of empty streets, life is slowly returning to our cities. James Moore on a new film series at the Barbican, which explores the grimy underbelly of our urban existence

‘Long Day’s Journey into Night’, a dream-like Chinese drama showing at the Barbican (Bi Gan)

I was driving from LA though the desert. You come up to the top of a hill and you look out into black desert and there in front of you are the glittering lights of Vegas. I thought, this is such an incredible metaphor. This glittering, profit-eating, capitalist centre in the middle of the desert, this alienated elegance. Then I started walking around and I found it was nothing like that vision at all. There were all these horrible buffets with bad food at $4.99 for all you can eat. It was tacky. That’s what I thought was so interesting.”

So says Nina Menkes, the maker of the remarkable Queen of Diamonds, a film which offers a unique vision of the city of sin. Astonishingly made for just $65,000, at least half of which covered the cost of the 35mm film, it is one of the centrepieces of the Barbican’s Return to the City season. The event is well timed as some of the west’s Covid-wracked cities start to emerge blinking into vaccinated sunlight. Commerce and culture, largely on life support, have started to move again. The streets are no longer deserted. But they're changing. The gleaming glass and concrete towers that people commuted into daily have been hollowed out with remote working taking over for millions of employees.

Much of a city’s allure is lost if only bankers and businessmen can live there. Perhaps the office space they are vacating could be converted into affordable housing